Jonathan Wand

Law and Data : The Butterfly Ballot Episode

Cornell University On televisions Law and Order, the police catch criminals and hand them over to the lawyers to get convictions. Part of the programs dramatic tension comes from the police operating under the scrutiny of a rigid and unforgiving legal system. The suspense increases as the lawyers try to do their job even though there is often a gap between justice and what the law requires. In Law and Data, data analysts track down the facts and prove their theories, but often have trouble explaining them simply and clearly. Lawyers find it hard to obtain, or even define, justice. And the law sometimes goes in odd directions, missing the biggest facts and emphasizing seemingly trivial ones. Justice is not always done. Our episode of Law and Data involves political scientists from Cornell, Harvard, Northwestern, and the University of California, Berkeley, who came together through a series of accidents